


My Oasis

by JuxtaposedNova



Category: Open Heart (Visual Novels)
Genre: Angst, Boss/Employee Relationship, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Fame, Hurt No Comfort, Mentor/Protégé, Mutual Pining, Open Heart fanfiction, Or Naveen will force them in a room, Running Away, celebrity gossip, cowardice, no beta we die like spartans, these idiots need to get their shit together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29824920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuxtaposedNova/pseuds/JuxtaposedNova
Summary: While in the Amazon, Ethan is haunted by the choices he made - and while replying to his holiday emails, he stumbles across a particularly enchanting visage on a magazine cover that forces a few realizations into the depth of his torment.
Relationships: Ethan Ramsey/Main Character (Open Heart), Ethan Ramsey/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	My Oasis

**Author's Note:**

> Keep thinking that I'm seeing water, you're playing tricks on me in the sun. See your shadow in the courtyard, stays until the day is done. The desert don't end, the rain don't fall, and I can't pretend I don't want you all. 'Cause I want you all. Oh, babe, I really need you, my feelings getting deeper. My mind is in a free fall, but there's nothing I can do when it comes to you. You play with my emotions, I'm flowing like the ocean. I pray for your devotion, 'cause there's nothing I can do when it comes to you.
> 
> If you like the story, feel free to leave kudos or a comment.
> 
> Enjoy!

* * *

Night-time arrived, carrying a veil of sparkling stars behind it, spurred along by its escape from the embrace of daylight. The heat accosted every inch of his skin, the humidity it produced making the fabric of his shirt melt into him uncomfortably.

Despite washing his hands before being returned to the lodge, he could still see traces of blood underneath his fingernails. The scent of sweat and sterility clung to him like a grim fragrance of the lives lost and saved throughout the day as he fought off a pandemic with an amazing team of doctors underneath his leadership.

Yet something weighed on him accusingly. 

It wasn’t like death, but it wasn’t living. It was a simple, weightless splendour, an endless slumber within a crushing depth. His attempts at ensnaring his emotions had proved fruitless, the rupture of the fruit itself with a taste of ash on his tongue as a parting gift of what he’d done. The future he had so unwillingly left shattered, the one who so reverently believed in him and the salvation of the possibility of belonging…and that he could deliver it.

Pulling his sweat-soaked shirt over his head, he found relief in the cool night air hitting his skin with an absentminded caress. Approaching the window, he leaned against the glass with his arm over the frame as he gazed out at the dark landscape before him.

The jungle around him teemed with animals and insects, a ceaseless concert of humming, thrumming, buzzing, and chirping provided a welcoming white noise to the invasion of thoughts he so guiltily desired but was unable to harbour for long. He was drunk of lost faith, questioning, and telling the whole empire of his fears and desires whether it was time to write the threnody of a love he didn’t allow to blossom beyond the memory of a yearning smile.

Ghost arms wrapped around his middle, a phantom warmth against his naked back – he could almost feel her. He kept thinking that she was standing on his floor, waiting for him. A bottle of bourbon that tasted like her lipstick on top of the bedside table provided him the visage of her dancing. If he drank enough, he could lay down next to her at the foot of his bed.

And yet, the bottle’s call was feeble – not enough to pull him in and tangle his mind into nothing more than fuzzy radio static. It had also been master to a bitter lesson. He was always where he started in the morning, only with a fucked up hangover and even more regret.

The hammock on the balcony swayed delicately from side to side, pulled back and forth by a sylph’s soft melody. It connected thread after thread into the memory of her shape before him, as he imagined what she’d look like leaning against the balcony, a breathtaking mien of serenity drawing from her the smile he couldn’t get enough of.

Ethan pushed himself off the window, opened it, made sure the mosquito net was in place, and made his way to the bathroom, not caring to close the door behind him – for he was alone. Stripping what remained of his clothing, he stared back at his reflection on the mirror. The love marks she had painted on his body with her lips mocked his will.

With a blink, they were gone in a gust of wind, smoke, and sugar.

Long gone with the scent of passionfruit and tea she had left imprinted on his palms, back and feet, all the way to the tips of his hair. His bedsheet, his pillow, and his dog. His spirit, his soul, and his creed. His words, space and time had frozen all the way to his bones from the taste of opal of her kisses.

If anyone knew that he’d give up his entire life to be with her again, he’d be unable to deny it. She was the woman that dripped fire. The woman that had granted him access to the last fissure of her body, from whence a flower had blossomed – powdered gold covering and overflowing from its white petals and mauve nectary, to the purple tips and the yellow anthers.

Lukewarm water glittered down his body as it washed away his exhaustion and frustration. He rubbed his skin raw, digging his fingertips into it as if he could bury something that couldn’t die. There was no redeeming him for the possessive nature of the undisclosed desire he would forever nurse for her.

The bubbles from the soap reflected the light from the small hanging light above – accompanied by the flow of water stopping. It shone, paper moons hanging over his head as he wrapped an indigo towel around his body and brushed his teeth.

His feet padded softly against the wooden floor while he changed into his sleepwear, opting to forgo the shirt because of the sweltering heat.

At last, he turned all lights but the one on his bedside table off and climbed into bed. His glasses rested comfortably over his nose, providing him a better vision as he reached for his phone to reply to whatever emails he had received during the day.

Most were business related and others were not worth his time. 

A message from Harper awaited him, wishing him a merry Christmas, and hoping for his safe return.

Another one from Naveen, wishing him the same as Harper and recounting hospital gossip he had no interest in unless it mentioned a certain someone. And his mentor knew it, so he made sure to tell him that she had left to visit her family for the holidays. It was an unspoken agreement.

He knew the damage he had caused with his departure and lack of communication – he had fled from her only to be met with her everywhere he went. Sitting on the edge of her fingertips, he had watched the ticking of the clock. Caught in the middle of her, in endless constellations and cosmic powder.

She had shown no emotion to evidence his absence, but Naveen was good at reading between the lines.

Hidden underneath her skirts, his cursed kisses remained. Underneath his bed remained every morning they had undone it. Inside of a glass rested the first wave of the last morning he shared with her, and in her curls the rhythm of those songs she seductively danced to. Written in sighs were the words they never uttered.

Her window remained open so that the time without him escaped.

And she was light, a costume. A lamppost that lit up when he walked past it. Any butterfly that crossed his path, a shooting star. The taste of water, a proverb on how to forget. The beauty mark that adorned his skin, the coffee he drank every morning.

Replying to his father, he also wished him a merry Christmas, letting him know that he’d visit before New Year’s. At the end of the email, he told him he loved him and to take care of Jenner.

Almost lethargically, his mind fought the spell of sleep but the whimpering hum of water babbling past his ears lulled his senses against all reason. He had half a mind to put his phone down and lay his head on the pillow.

But he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping much as long as he thought of her.

He was enveloped in an infinite sea of torment and guilt, never knowing what lay below but always aware of what was left behind. Begging his lover gone to spare him was useless, for in his mind, she was merciless and cruel.

She would torture him with memories of her smile, of her scent, of her eyes, of her voice, her accent, and laughter. The inerrant grace, regal poise, and elegance confined and treasured in her svelte. The way she moved, purposeful and ethereal in a way that few people were capable of. Most could not see the difference, but he could watch others stumble about like infants.

He closed the mail app and opened the browser. Perhaps the medical terminology in research journals would grant him enough drowsiness to allow Morpheus’ embrace to tangle him in the bedsheets.

But life was a capricious mistress, and he knew her to be with more certainty than any other time in his life when he stumbled upon the cover of a gossip magazine amongst the advertisements on the medical website.

Breath was sucked from his lungs and trapped inside of a honeyed jar.

He would be able to identify her even if she were a grain of sand on a beach. With a trembling heart, he stared at the picture longer than he could register, staring into her profile joined by maudlin longing.

Calypso Laveau, the heir, his intern, his former lover, his apprentice, his friend, _his_.

Her background was no foreign concept to him, but he had never paid it much mind. As long as it didn’t interfere with her work, he had not cared for it. And, yet, it was her linage that had granted him solace in the shape of the celebrity gossip he so passionately despised.

One of the powerful heirs to one of Europe’s most powerful enterprises. Daughter to old and new money. Born to silks and jewels, to abundance and fame. She had returned to the motherland to be with her family for the holidays, to join them in celebration. He wondered if she’d tell them about him. 

But he recognized her. Her hair cascading with gravity against a marble backdrop, her half-lidded eyes looking up at something he couldn’t see, a snake circling her neck, and her lips deriding his cowardice.

It was as if he had stumbled upon an oasis in the desert and the water was unable to quench the thirst that ailed him. It hit him hard, bruising his heart just as it would a neophyte to pain. But he drowned himself in her, drinking and feeling bereft of relief. Clinging to her with bloodied fingers scraped down to the bone.

Unfairness filled him as it would the tantrum of a child. Her picture before him was akin to a cork popping off a bottle, leaving Ethan with all those feelings bubbling up, oozing out, drying on his skin with the saccharine scent of something he should’ve savoured.

He paused and laughed at himself softly. Like an idol or figure of divinity Calypso’s image burned into his mind. Everything about her was wrapped into him, and he couldn’t begin to tear her out if he tried.

And what else was he but a coward and a sinner in the eyes of a god he no longer believed in? He had knelt there, with his weary head on her lap in the midst of an empty temple, praying to idols he had long cast aside in favour of the divinity of her skin against his and the love they made between the sheets.

Selfishly, he hoped for her devotion. For her to wait for him just so he could watch the adoration in her eyes one last time, just so he could pretend for a moment that his heart didn’t thump uselessly, where words meant less that the things he felt. 

It dawned on him, then, as his thumb caressed the screen where her countenance was displayed.

He needed her. He needed her not because he wanted her, but because he was bound to her by emotions he dared not name for fear of materializing them into something realer than he could handle being a continent away from her.

Tapping the advertisement, he hoped to learn more but was stopped by the site’s required paid membership. Fatigue overcame curiosity and he decided to leave the tab open so he could pay for the damn thing in the morning.

Carefully, he connected his phone to its charger, placed it on the bedside table, took off his glasses and turned the lamp off. The bed creaked under his weight as he turned on his side.

Stillness took over as he narrowed his eyes in the dark, looking down at the folds on the bedsheets, as if they held an omen that determined their destiny. Part of him believed that there was no human power capable of making them understand how irrational it was for them to give in.

For a moment, he caught a glimpse of her shadow beside him, rising and falling with every breath she took. It was a cosmic sort of translucent frame, glittering and shining in a space bereft of light – but it only reached so far before darkness swallowed it. A dusk so indelible that the sun would possibly never come.

The aroma of passionfruit reached him despite her absence, and he closed his eyes, inhaling deeply lest it slip past him to never return.

Ethan smiled. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you wish to read my stories before I post them here, find me on Tumblr:
> 
> https://droppedmydamncroissant.tumblr.com/
> 
> I'll be happy to add you to my tag list.


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